The question of the restoration of the property was referred anew to the senate, who yielding to their feelings of resentment prohibited its restoration, and forbade its being brought into the treasury; it was given as plunder to the plebs, that their share in this spoliation might destroy for ever any prospect of peaceable relations with the Tarquins.
The land of the Tarquins, which lay between the City and the
There happened, it is said, to be a crop of corn there which was ripe
for the harvest, and as it would have been sacrilege to consume what was
growing on the Campus, a large body of men were sent to cut it. They
carried it, straw and all, in baskets to the
It was the height of the summer and the stream was low, consequently the corn stuck in the shallows, and heaps of it were covered with mud; gradually as the debris which the river brought down collected there, an island was formed. I believe that it was subsequently raised and strengthened so that the surface might be high enough above the water, and firm enough to carry temples and colonnades.
After the royal property had been disposed of, the traitors were sentenced and executed. Their punishment created a great sensation owing to the fact that the consular office imposed upon a father the duty of inflicting punishment on his own children; he who ought not to have witnessed it was destined to be the one to see it duly carried out.
Youths belonging to the noblest families were standing tied to the post, but all eyes were turned to the consul's children, the others were unnoticed.
Men did not grieve more for their punishment than for the crime which
had incurred it —that they should have conceived the idea, in that year
above all, of betraying to one, who had been a ruthless tyrant and was
now an exile and an enemy, a newly liberated country, their father, who
had liberated it, the consulship which had originated in the Junian
house, the senate, the plebs, all that